Angel of Ruin (Kim Wilkins)

I have mixed feelings about Kim Wilkins' books, but I usually pick them up if I see them in the library. She writes a good YA series about a teenage psychic, and while I've enjoyed one or two of her novels for adults, others didn't grab me at all.

Angel of Ruin (also published as Fallen Angel) is a little confusing. It seems to begin as a story-within-a-story type of thing, but the part I initially thought was the main story is merely a bookend to the tale that takes up the majority of the book. John Milton's daughters call upon a guardian angel, and an angel appears - but is he their guardian? Perhaps, Deborah Milton thinks, he doesn't mean them any good at all.

I enjoyed the character of the angel, and the idea that some otherworldly being was whispering in Milton's ear while he dictated Paradise Lost to his daughters, who act as his scribes. I think the story descends into not entirely convincing melodrama towards the end, to an extent, but I was still relatively enthralled with it - as much as I become enthralled with gothic fantasy/drama, anyway. It's an easy read, and if you're into gothic-style fiction, it's probably just your cup of tea.

The Constant Princess (Philippa Gregory)

I like Philippa Gregory's historical novels, especially this loose series of hers which has been revolving around Henry VIII and the powerful families of that time. The Constant Princess is the story of Katherine of Aragon, and we begin by meeting Catalina, Infanta of Spain, when she is a child, watching her parents fight battles and secure their kingdom.

I think Catalina's descriptions of her parents' court are the most beguiling and beautifully written parts of The Constant Princess - I longed to spend my days reclining in a scented bathhouse, and strolling through gardens wearing thin silk robes. Gregory imagines her in love with her first husband, Arthur, and this is a pleasurable little romance. Unfortunately, I think the story finishes a little abruptly - we do not see the birth of Mary, or Katherine's decline in power. I would have liked to see how Gregory portrayed these times in Katherine's life.

The Historian (Elizabeth Kostova)

I read a lot about The Historian on various book blogs, but was a bit unsure about it. I saw it described as the Da Vinci Code with vampires, which didn't really seem like my sort of thing, but I ended up giving it a try.

I can see why it's a little Da Vinci Code-ish - lots of history, lots of information, often narrated to you by various characters. People chasing each other around Europe frantically researching things in libraries. Kostova's characters, however, are much more like people than Brown's info-dumping mechanisms, and her writing is vastly superior. It's a tremendously exciting book - I was quite enthralled in their chase, despite the occasionally clumsy mechanism of letters telling much of the story.

Unfortunately, Kostova's characters suffer a little from the sheer scale of this book - a teenage girl, who is perhaps intended to be the "main" character, simply reads her father's letters to us, and barely becomes a person in her own right. I think that it's very difficult to combine the two though - if you're going to have a novel on an enormous scale and essentially educate your readers about a lot of Eastern European history, it's almost imposssible to create nuanced realistic characters at the same time. Regardless, The Historian is a very enjoyable read, but it's definitely an adventure story rather than a character study.

The Art of Detection (Laurie R King)

I obviously wasn't paying a great deal of attention when I picked this book up at the library, because I was expecting another installment in King's series of Sherlock Holmes novels. The Art of Detection is more properly described as a Kate Martinelli novel - another one of King's serial characters, a San Francisco detective - although it involves the discovery of an unpublished Conan Doyle story narrated by Sherlock Holmes, thereby loosely linking King's two popular mystery series.

I'm not sure if the linking together really worked. The short story is narrated out within the pages of this book, and I became quite distracted with it, which reduced my interest in the resolution of the "real" mystery that Kate was trying to solve. There were almost too many threads to this - Kate's family life, characters from previous Kate novels, the murder (or is it a murder?) that Kate's trying to solve, and then the story-within-a-story. At times, I thought it moved rather slowly.

However, King's skill draws everything together at the end - a satisfactorily tense resolution to Kate's case - and the murdered character whose life is revealed slowly through the book is quite fascinating. It's not one of King's best books - I'm really more a fan of her Sherlock novels - but still an enjoyable read, if you persevere through the occasional slow patches.

Tree of Hands (Ruth Rendell)

I enjoy Ruth Rendell's work a lot, but I do tend to read her books for relaxation, rather than because I'm utterly absorbed in the story. No, I take that back - I become very absorbed in her books, but they don't tend to stay with me - when they finish, they drop out of my mind, which is why I consider them light reading, despite their regularly depressing content.

Tree of Hands is the story of Benet, her son James, and her mother Mopsa, and another family, Carol, Barry and Carol's three children, some of whom are in care. Mopsa, who has always been somewhat mentally disturbed, is the connection who brings these families together in an unexpected way. Events tumble onward through the novel, bring disaster after disaster to its characters - even Benet's gradual reawakening is shadowed by the reader's foreboding of eventual disaster.

Rendell is known for delving into the darker parts of the human psyche, and she does it immensely well - you sympathise with her most unsympathetic characters because you recognise parts of yourself in their desperate greed and meanness. I imagine if you're a fan of psychological thrillers, then Tree of Hands will linger in your thoughts longer than it did in mine - it is an excellent book, afterall.